Quantum kicks ass

So.. I was curious so yesterday I downloaded it to try and see, and oh boy oh boy is it smooth and snappy. Firefox is back from the limbo of bloated crapware it would appear. If you use older hardware like myself you are in for a big surprise. About time Mouzilla, about time :)

Quantum is an ongoing Mozilla project encompassing several software development efforts to "build the next-generation web engine for Firefox users". It includes numerous improvements to the Gecko web browser engine of Firefox, largely incorporated from the experimental Servo project. *Firefox 57* is the initial version with a Servo component enabled. Mozilla dubs this and several planned future releases "*Firefox Quantum*".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_(software)

I guess I will try 57 out, but I'm sticking with 52 ESR until 59 ESR comes out. Hopefully by then all of my addons will have WebExtensions versions... Specifically the password-related ones for which there are no WebExtensions APIs yet.

(By the way a WebExtensions version of NoScript is out.)

EDIT: It is faster than 52 ESR. Other than the addons thing, I'd like to tweak the UI, but I'll wait until 59 ESR before doing that. Also the new NoScript isn't as full-featured as the old one and has a different UI.

Good question! My biggest issue with the old Firefox was that it quickly shovelled all of my RAM into a burlap sack and then made all my other applications ask *very* nicely, if they ever wanted to use any of it ..

It is very good. Vanilla FF without addons takes approximately 140 mb RAM here while 52 used to take around 210..

But really, the big difference is noticeable on old hardware and on heavy pages. Diaspora for example, the feeling I get it is at least twice smoother, I kid you not :)

Mouzilllaa \o/

EDIT: it is actually consuming 138 mb of RAM with noscript installed here.. wonderful. Also, opening say 15 tabs doesn't slow it down apparently nor does it increase the RAM too much. If you go on say medium.com with an old craptop like mine with FF 52 you will have to wait like 8 seconds for the screen to become usable, so big is the lag of the GUI. With 57 it loads immediately, all the text and the page is immediately scrollable, while the ton of pictures loads.
It takes me 12 seconds to start it the first time (freshly booted OS) and then 5 seconds to hit the searx page, my home page. Used to be a lot more with 52, like 25-15 ..
Just great, they did a great work. Now the only thing to see is how much the mountain of security bugs will be tall :P

A 2007 laptop completely loading Firefox in 5 seconds on each subsequent load, and then running smooth as hell all the time on all websites - fantastic :)
Don't have to wait 20 seconds anymore, which was one of the things that annoyed me the most.. \o/

Really? So version 48 supports both? In that case, I wonder what took all the add-on developers so long to convert their extensions over.

When my browser got updated, there were no add-ons that could turn JavaScript off. Now there are two that I'm aware of, and both are completely inadequate because they don't cause noscript tags to show up (NoScript is one of the two). So now, I'm stuck with toggling JavaScript in about:config, because that's literally the only possible way to toggle JavaScript (and the irony of this is that the fact that the old NoScript could effectively work as a JavaScript toggle was one of the justifications for removing the "JavaScript" checkbox in the options menu).

Hopefully add-ons will catch up eventually. As it is, the only incentives I have to use Firefox instead of another libre browser (like Midori) are WebKit security issues and the fact that I've already got all my bookmarks and saved passwords in Firefox.

* Firefox (with Greasemonkey) is the only browser I've used where user scripts work without other JavaScript enabled. I'm not sure why.

And yes, I'm quite annoyed that just because you turn JavaScript off with an extension, every site thinks you have JS enabled, and they won't serve the non-JS version. I hate how poor the image results in searx.me are, but at least it works without Google's JavaScript botnet.

The noscript tag isn't "served" based on what the server thinks, it's a browser behavior to cause content within those tags to be visible. The problem is that the extensions in question don't actually disable JavaScript, so Firefox's un-hiding of these elements is not triggered. In the previous version of NoScript, it was (as long as you had that enabled in the add-on preferences).

For me it's not just annoying, it's completely unworkable. One of the forums I frequent has a silly JavaScript-based "rich text" post editor and a fallback basic one inside a noscript tag. If I have the new NoScript enabled, I cannot post at all on that forum (unless I whitelist that site and allow its JavaScript to run).

Quantum really does kick ass. I can browse the Web while loading heavy apps like Riot. I can't wait for Abrowser 57. (Firefox is filled with annoying ads and links to services that require proprietary JavaScript.)

Just a friendly reminder for those using the new noscript extension and having troubles figuring out how to make it as secure as the old one (well, almost.. clickjacking and ABE are still missing).

Instead of untrusting websites and making long list just make your default 'all unchecked'. Strictest 'custom' to make a website completely usable (diaspora for instance) is you check only "script" and "fetch".

Also, and I say this coz I've read people having trouble with it too.. To purge the default whitelist (which will let you execute js from eww google and amazon etc), click on 'debug' in the bottom and remove manually from the text below the entries in 'allowed'.

I like the 'density - compact' in customize, less space taken by GUI, more space for teh site. I heard in the next version or two there will also be an option to hide the titlebar, that's even more space, very useful for those with small monitors, think laptops.
In the meanwhile been experimenting with devilspie as described here.
Looks good..

For me the latest abrowser (57) is very slow. Startup is fast, but it now takes me over 4 seconds to completely load a page, e.g. Slashdot. I'm using the following enabled add-ons: Dark Background and Light Text, NoScript, uBlock Origin (was pre-installed by default), User Agent Switcher 1.12 (as a replacement for the regular User Agent Switcher), Violentmonkey (as Greasemonkey doesn't seem to work) and YouTube Video and Audio Downloader (as a substitute for Download Flash and Video which didn't find any videos on YouTube with JavaScript disabled). I still didn't find any replacements for DownThemAll! or FlashGot. It isn't my main browser thankfully (and it won't be as long as PulseAudio is a requirement), but it's still rather disappointing.

Did you start fresh when you installed it? Also ublock should definitely not come preinstalled..
I recommend you purge your .mozilla folder in home and your mozilla cache in /home/.cache, start it up and install one addon at the time, so you can spot the one that is slowing it down for you. Quantum should be fast for you.

Yeah I started fresh (I deleted the profile folder).
I think uBlock came preinstalled on the version I got from AUR (on Hyperbola). I think the offending add-on is the color inverter - unfortunately the interface is unusable with inverted colors unlike Seamonkey. It takes a whole second to invert the colors after loading the page.
On a netbook Abrowser 57 simply froze while installing add-ons. On a T60 it works OK (startup is fast but pages take 2 seconds longer than Seamonkey to load), but much slower than Seamonkey (and much less functional: no ALSA, no Mozplugger/mpv, no legacy add-ons etc).

I think the fact it has the "Recommended by Pocket" section on the new tab by default is quite intrusive. It's basically like an advertisement and it does seem to be tailored to my interests (which makes me wonder how they got this information in the first place). I know you can easily disable it but the fact that it is there in the first place by default really annoys me.

Also the fact that a lot of security-related addons are no longer supported like Request Policy really sucks. The fact that all the add-ons have to be re-written just for this quantum update seems really inconvenient.

Switching to WebExtensions is important. It standardizes the format for
browser extensions so that you can write an extension once and it will
generally work in any browser that supports browser extensions.

You don't want Mozilla to keep changing the extension format, do you?
WebExtensions is the last time we'll ever have to change it, because
it's a standard supported by Chrome, Edge and Safari.